Podcast: Jonathan Harris

Join me in the third of three podcasts from the Creators Series. Jonathan Harris, an artist whose medium is data, experiments in the space where anthropology meets visual arts meets computer science. He talks with me about mythologies, love, and lossiness and explains in-depth his works We Feel Fine and Universe. The former uses large-scale blog analysis to study human feelings and the latter examines modern mythology (read: global news media) by presenting new constellations, with personal meaning.
Jonathan was commissioned by Yahoo! in 2006 to create the world’s largest time capsule, which was available online for one month in ten languages. In 2004, he was awarded a Fabrica fellowship, and he is the recipient of two Webby awards. He has lectured at the National Academy of Sciences, the TED Conference, the Museum of Modern Art, Parsons School of Design, ITP, Princeton and Stanford Universities, and at Google. His work has been recognized by AIGA, Ars Electronica, I.D. magazine, and the State of Vermont, and has been featured by CNN, Reuters, the BBC, The Guardian, USA Today, NPR, and Wired. LISTEN.

Abstract from Luminous Green

A recently discovered transcript from the Luminous Green conference in Brussels last Spring, plus remembrance of the abstract I wrote before then. I will write a more in-depth piece and follow up properly.

Podcast: Paul "Moose" Curtis

This week’s podcast, the second of three from the Creators Series , is a conversation with Moose Curtis, a reverse grafitti artist based in Brighton, England. Curtis began making public art by cleaning walls on a grand scale beginning in 1999, an idea he got after seeing that people had written their names on dirty tunnel walls in his hometown of Leeds. At first he did it purely for sport, creating freehand stylings (while fulfilling his fetish for cleaning) using a shoe brush and water. Later, after large corporations began asking him to write their names in the dirt as well, he began taking commissions, which he still thinks is great but his friends think is terrible. With his company, Symbolix, he has taken clients such as Microsoft and Smirnoff, while continuing to pursue his own personal exploits. LISTEN.

Podcast: Theo Watson

This week’s podcast, the first of three from the Creators Series, is a conversation with Theodore Watson, an interactive artist and designer living in Amsterdam who empowers people to experience their surroundings in completely new ways – by creating such things as interactive sonic spaces (“Daisies” and “Vinyl Workout,” for instance), rope-controlled screen interfaces, and digital tools for graffiti writers to tag the facades of tall buildings. He has worked as an artist in residence at the Ars Electronica Futurelab and as a production fellow at Eyebeam. He also collaborated recently with director Michel Gondry on an interactive exhibition for Gondry’s latest film, The Science of Sleep, which appeared at Deitch Projects in New York, Colette in Paris, and C’M’C Costume National in Milan. Theo has exhibited his work in New York, Paris, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Milan, and Linz. He is currently collaborating with Zachary Lieberman on openFrameworks, an open source programming interface for writing creative code in C++. Theodore is also an adjunct member of the Graffiti Research Lab, with whom he has developed the Interactive Architecture, L.A.S.E.R. Tag, and KPN Façade projects. For more on Theo, visit Muonics. LISTEN.

Podcast: Carole Collett

This week, the final episode in the Luminous Green series, you’ll hear me walking and talking in the Belgian countryside with Carole Collett, Course Director of the MA in Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins. Carole is a textiles pioneer who inspires future generations of designers by mapping out ways to redefine our intimate and emotional relationships within “smart homes” using intelligent textiles and sustainable design. As a designer and consultant, she specializes in textile print, R&D, sustainable and smart textiles. Most recently, Carole has teamed up with Sir John Sulston, who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for his work in unraveling the genetic code of the C. elegans worm. This is one of several textile designer/scientist pairings for the Nobel Textiles project that Carole co-developed with Professor Amanda Fishers (MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, London). LISTEN.

Podcast: Marko Peljhan

In this episode, the fifth of six from Luminous Green, I speak with Slovenian-born multimedia performance artist Marko Peljhan, coordinator of Project Atol, Makrolab, and Insular Technologies, a high-frequency global radio network initiative. For the past few years Marko has been overseeing the design for the Arctic and Antarctic Makrolab projects, within the larger framework of the I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art and Science Consortium). Prior, he co-founded one of the first open access digital media labs in Eastern Europe (in Ljubljana), worked at Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab) as program director, and served as the flight director of seven art- and science-related parabolic flights with the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow. In 2000 he received the special Medienkunst prize at the ZKM; in 2001 the Golden Nica Prix at Ars Electronica (with Carsten Nicolai); and in 2004 the second prize of the UNESCO Digital Media Art Award. LISTEN.

Podcast: Angelo Vermeulen

This week is the fourth in a series of six conversations from Luminous Green. I spoke with Angelo Vermeulen, a visual artist working with photography, video, new media and bio-inspired installations. Educated as a scientist (PhD in ecology, 1998, University of Leuven, Belgium) and trained in photography (at the Art Academy of Leuven), his work bridges the art-science divide. Angelo is regularly invited to give lectures on art, science and new technologies in universities and art institutes, and is a lecturer at the Institute for Higher Education in the Sciences & the Arts, Sint-Lucas in Ghent (B). He is working on his first book in partnership with art-philosopher Antoon Van den Braembussche on the relationship between art, technology and spirituality. In September Angelo begins an artist residency (and exhibition) at the Aesthetic Technologies Lab in Athens, Ohio. LISTEN.

Podcast: Randall Krantz

In this episode, the third of six from Luminous Green, I talked to Randall Krantz about the global challenge of climate change. Randall, who runs the Climate Change initiatives at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, brings the voice of the business community into multi-stakeholder partnerships, particularly through dialogue with governments and civil society. On climate issues, he focuses on future long-term policy, smarter investment, and practical actions towards changing behaviors of business and consumers. Before joining the WEF’s environment team in 2005, Randall worked as a field engineer for GE Power Systems, helped the commercialization efforts of a London-based fuel cell initiative, and pursued an MBA in Barcelona. He is interested in exploring how public-private partnerships can offer entrepreneurial solutions to global environmental issues, and how well-designed and innovative business strategies can spur positive change in consumer and business choices. LISTEN.

Podcast: Maja Kuzmanovic

In this episode, the second of six from Luminous Green, Jennifer sits down with Maja Kuzmanovic, “a generalist interested in inciting small miracles in everyday life.” Throughout the 1990s Maja collaborated with scientific institutes, as well as roamed the field as an independent artist/researcher. She worked in MR, VR and online, infusing digital technologies with physical movement, narrative alchemy and audiovisual poetry. For her works, Maja was elected one of the Top 100 Young Innovators by MIT’s Technology Review in 1999. She founded FoAM in 2000 and has since functioned as FoAM’s PI, eco+media artist and head chef. Her leadership skills have been recognized by the World Economic Forum, awarding Maja with the title “Young Global Leader” in 2006. She received her BA in Design Forecasting (HKU) and MA in Interactive Multimedia (HKU/University of Portsmouth). LISTEN.

Da da da dum

My podcast is now officially up and running.

June launch

Finally! I'm set to launch my podcast in early June. All shows will be released on Mondays at Worldchanging. Check there for more! The first will be one of six conversations from Luminous Green, a fabulous cross-disciplinary design conference that I attended in Belgium recently.

First comes travel, then comes podcast

I'm just back from giving a keynote in Japan (at the International Design Center Nagoya), and in two weeks will set off for India, for the Doors of Perception conference. This year, I'm participating in the pre-plenary Round Table, where I'll have the pleasure of collaborating with innovators from all over the world. Specifically, innovators in the space where food meets sustainability. Needless to say, the podcast will have to wait.

Designeradio to launch soon!

It's a podcast about the world of design and the design of the world. Hosted by Jennifer Leonard, creator of Massive Change Radio and co-author of Massive Change: The Future of Global Design (Phaidon, 2004) with Bruce Mau, DESIGNERADIO takes inspiration from visionaries across disciplines who are channeling their passions towards the greater good.

"The best way to predict the future is to design it." - Buckminster Fuller